Students get nothing from 7-years of English learning at general school

VietNamNet Bridge – After spending a lot of time and exertion to learn English
at general schools, students still cannot obtain four basic skills of listening,
speaking, reading and writing.

Students can read, but cannot understand

Pham Thanh Tam, Headmaster of the Hong Duc High School in Binh Thanh district in
HCM City, said that many times he examined the English skills of 12th graders to
prepare them for the final exams, and found out that their skills are too bad.

“Students can read text, but they do not understand the content and they cannot
summarize the text,” Tam said.

A survey conducted recently by the HCM City Department for Science and
Technology has also shown pessimistic results. After finishing secondary school,
ninth graders can only speak simple sentences, such as greetings, giving names,
while they cannot relate a tale with 100 words as requested by the foreign
language teaching program.

How many percentages of students have weak skills in listening and speaking? The
answers are 78 percent for students and 70 percent for teachers, 73 percent for
management officers and 75 percent of students’ parents.

In late 2011, the reports released by the British Council and Apollo Education
Center, show that Vietnamese students ranked the 8th out of the 20 surveyed
countries in reading and writing skills, but ranked the 18th in listening and
speaking.

Cao Huy Thao, now Headmaster of the Vietnam-Australia High School in Phu Nhuan
district in HCM City, former Deputy Headmaster of Luong The Vinh High School in
district 1, who spent many years on teaching English, cited many factors that
lead to the low quality of English teaching at general school, including the
unreasonable curriculums, teaching and learning conditions, unqualified teaching
staff and unreasonable assessment method.

Tran Dinh Nguyen Lu, an official of the HCM City Education and Training
Department, also said that the curriculums are not really “modern” with low
updating levels. Especially, the curriculums have been designed in the way that
adults force children to learn according their way of thinking.

Educators said that in teaching foreign languages, students need to practice
regularly, which means that teachers should organize various activities during
the lessons. In order to do that, the classrooms need to be located separately
from other rooms, so that the students’ activities do not affect the nearby
classrooms. Besides, the number of students in a class should be low enough to
ensure that all of them can practice in the lessons. Especially, teachers
themselves need to have good listening and speaking skills.

Meanwhile, general schools all complain that it’s very difficult to find
qualified English teachers nowadays. Le Thuy Hoa, Headmaster of the Thai Binh
High School, said that the teachers of the schools are all excellent graduates
of the Foreign Language University of Education. However, they cannot work as
interpreters when the school receives foreign guests.

Hoa said that an international agency has sent officers to the school to help
the school improve the English teaching. The officers need an English teacher of
the school to help them during the lesson. However, the best teacher of the
school said she is not confident enough to take the job.

A recent survey on the qualification of English teaching staff at general
schools of Vietnam in accordance with European standards showed surprising
results. Only 14 percent of secondary school teachers and 4 percent of high
school teachers in Hai Duong province can meet the standards.

The official result for HCM City has not been released, but sources said that
only 5 percent of teachers can satisfy the requirements to teach at secondary
and high schools.